Why are you participating for Based Africa?

CraftLink aims to empower African artisans by bridging the gap between traditional craftsmanship and the digital economy. We're participating in Based Africa because we believe in the potential of blockchain technology to transform the artisan sector, creating economic opportunities and preserving cultural heritage across the continent.

What challenges are you focusing on?

CraftLink addresses several key challenges in the African artisan community:

1. Lack of digital presence for skilled artisans
2. Trust issues between clients and service providers
3. Informal payment systems leading to disputes
4. Limited access to broader market opportunities
5. Difficulty in verifying artisan skills and reliability

How does your submission address this challenge?

CraftLink is a blockchain-based platform that:

1. Digitizes artisan profiles and services, creating an online presence for skilled craftspeople
2. Implements secure, transparent payment systems using smart contracts
3. Creates a trusted marketplace with verified providers through blockchain-verified registration
4. Expands market reach for local artisans by connecting them with a global client base
5. Standardizes service quality and pricing through a review and rating system
   Our platform empowers artisans to showcase their skills, find new clients, and manage their business securely. For clients, it offers a trusted marketplace to discover talented craftspeople, verify their skills, and manage projects with ease.

Challenges we ran into

1. Ensuring the platform is accessible to artisans with varying levels of technical literacy
2. The deployed site not allowing us to claim our project token. The action "claim token" did not work on fleek but it works in the localhost- (error Error: network does not support ENS (operation="getEnsAddress", info={ "network": { "chainId": "84532", "name": "Base Sepolia" } }, code=UNSUPPORTED_OPERATION, version=6.13.4)
3. Issues using the Coinbase wallet integration because of reliance on VPNs
4. We were unable to get the rainbowkit working at first due to base sepolia network not being recognized